the space between the heads has a standpipe that is stationary, allowing a nice fairing to be fitted to fill in that area
Does that imply its a fixed fairing and they dropped the weathervane design I read so much about?
One thing I am curious about is the expected efficiency of the Defiant in cruise. To date, all ABC ships have buried the QCA/transmission in the middle of the fuselage, keeping that massive drag out of the freestream - and simultaneously eating up almost the entirety of the cabin.
In order to regain useful payload space, that entire assembly has to be mounted on top of the pylon (to avoid what would otherwise be immense CG issues), which probably almost doubles frontal area.
What happens to Vcruise and efficiency in this case?